Electronic pachinko game and refill mod.

[poppo]

Not sure if many people here have played these electronic pachinko machines. They can actually be a bit fun and do require a little bit of skill (but mostly luck). I had two of these, but this one is the only one I still have pictures for. I started out with a machine I got on e-bay. I also bought an unfinished stand that I also found on e-bay and painted it to match the machine.

By default, you have to load the hopper on the top with balls. As you win, balls are dispensed out the front of the machine and feed back into it to be replayed. Once the top hopper is empty though, you need to refill it (that funnel looking thing on top). Balls that have been 'lost' will go down a chute and into a container in the back. Or in the case of this cabinet, will go down a tube to that front door. However it gets old really fast having to reload the balls into the top hopper all of the time

Now, I don’t know how rare there are, but I had found a couple of 'ball ladders' (don’t know what else to call them) on e-bay. What happens is the balls via a spinning pin wheel will be force fed up a tube to the top hopper. In the top hopper will be a switch. When the hopper gets full, it turns off the elevator motor. When it the hopper gets low, it turns the motor back on.

Actually implementing it was a bit tricky. First I had to mount the unit in the cabinet (more on that later). Then I had to route the ladder and tube so that it would go into the top hopper. As seen in the second picture, I used some cardboard to make the top hopper larger to hold more balls.

Getting the unit to fit in the cabinet and have the balls go where they should was the tricky part. As seen in the third picture, I first had to use some cardboard to get the lost balls from the machine into the elevator box (the red contraption).  I also has to drill a new hole in the cabinet (you can see the old one) so that if the elevator has more balls than will fit (because the hopper is still full) they will go drop into the new hole and be funneled to the front door.

So, in actual game play, when the top hopper gets low, it turns on the elevator which refills the hopper. This made it so you never had to manually refill anything. Any overflow balls from the elevator box that came out the front door, could just be put into the front of the machine where winning balls normally come and be replayed. Not many would end up coming out that way.

I really enjoyed these games and they had some cool graphics that would play on an LCD screen on the right depending on what you scored. I don’t think I ever saw all of the scenes it would play.

Anyway, I just thought this hopper filler thing might be of interest for someone who has one of these games. And I hope this all actually made some sense.

Machine in stand.


Rear of machine showing ball ladder assembly


Close-up of ball ladder assembly

[StatFreak]

Thanks for posting your mod poppo. 

I had looked into getting a ball elevator some time ago on pachitalk.com, but they seemed to be too expensive or problematic and I never ended up buying one.

How much did that elevator set you back?

I have two Pachinko machines. The older one (not that old) has three spinning reels similar to the one you have and would have best benefited from having an elevator. The the ball payout mechanism is mechanical and it holds the balls that have been shot into a winning hole and releases them one at a time, with each ball mechanically triggering a ball payout.

During the jackpot round, part of the design of the game is that the player has to keep shooting balls into the open jackpot door or the jackpot round will end prematurely. In addition, the round can sometimes be extended if the player can keep the balls going into the slot without any balls missing the door.

That means that the only way to play the game properly without a ball recycler is to shoot until the top runs out and the machine tilts. The tilt then gives the me time to reload the hopper and continue. Unfortunately, sometimes the balls inside the mech can jam if too many jackpot balls get backed up inside the mech, and then I have to open up the machine to clear it. In one case I couldn't directly access the stuck balls and clearing the jam was a major PITA.

On the other hand, the machine isn't a fever machine and rarely hits the jackpot, so I just learned to live with it.


My second machine is a Star Wars, is a newer model with an LCD display and a cool working mechanical 5-inch high model of R2D2 to the right of the screen. It uses the microprocessor to control the payouts, so all of the jackpot balls drop straight through to the bottom tray; the computer keeps track of how many have passed the optical sensor when the payouts fall behind. This model also doesn't end the jackpot round if I stop shooting into the jackpot door, so I can either stop and refill as I go or wait for the tilt without fear of a jam.

It's also more fun to play. It's a fever machine, so after the first jackpot the odds of winning another significantly increase for the next 100 spins and the trigger for the wing hole opens the wings almost every time. I usually get from 1-4 extra jackpot rounds during the fever mode, so hitting that first jackpot can keep me at the machine for over an hour.  I think I got 7 jackpot rounds (6 extra) on one occasion!   It also has some video game style bonus rounds that randomly pop up in which you can win a jackpot, and I'm still not sure if I've seen all of them.

R2 has a working light on his dome and when he turns it on and turns his "head" towards the LCD screen, the animation on the screen syncs with the real light so that it looks like the light is shining into the video. There is a segmented red LED Darth Vader light saber above the LCD and it animates when a video game bonus round is imminent, accompanied by Darth Vader's heavy breathing. If the light saber lights completely, you get the bonus.

[poppo]

How much did that elevator set you back?

I think I paid like $55 each for them (I had bought 2), but that was about 6 years ago. I never had any problems with them since they are really pretty simple in design. As I mentioned, it was more a matter of just getting it mounted in the right place and getting the balls to go where they needed to.

I forget what the other game was, but it was red and was in the same type of cabinet painted to match. It too had a cool video display that did animations when you hit certain things.

There used to be a lot more of those pachinko machines on e-bay back then then there are now.

I sort of regret getting rid of them, but I was running out of room after I get the pinball machine.

[poppo]

I was doing a search for the ball lifter and found this. $299.00 for a used one and $475 for a new one.  I don't think I sold the whole game, cabinet and all for $300. 
http://www.plasmainfusion.com/pachinko.htm

Also while looking around, I found this site that seems to have claimed my photos when I had posted this before and put their name on them. 
http://www.pachinkoman.com/information/pachinko-balls.htm

<edit> After looking up the contact info for the link above with my pictures, it turns out it is the guy who bought the machine from me. He could have at least taken his own pictures.

[StatFreak]

Also while looking around, I found this site that seems to have claimed my photos when I had posted this before and put their name on them. 
http://www.pachinkoman.com/information/pachinko-balls.htm

<edit> After looking up the contact info for the link above with my pictures, it turns out it is the guy who bought the machine from me. He could have at least taken his own pictures.

Agreed. At least he can say that he owns the machine in the pictures.   

I think I paid like $55 each for them (I had bought 2), but that was about 6 years ago.
...

I was doing a search for the ball lifter and found this. $299.00 for a used one and $475 for a new one.  I don't think I sold the whole game, cabinet and all for $300. 
http://www.plasmainfusion.com/pachinko.htm

That price is closer to the prices I found when I searched than the price you paid. I would have bought them if I had found them for $55.

[reho33]

Most parlors in Japan have a central ball source so they really never run out. I saw video of a person that had the equivalent of a shopping cart full of pachinko balls, lucky stiff.

[poppo]

Most parlors in Japan have a central ball source so they really never run out. I saw video of a person that had the equivalent of a shopping cart full of pachinko balls, lucky stiff.

Not sure if things have changed, but many years ago I was stationed in Japan. Since gambling was illegal, you would redeem the balls for 'toys'. Then you went down an alley and there would be a door with a slot. You put in the toys and got cash back.

[StatFreak]

The newer machines (like my Star Wars) also have a credit function where the player can buy balls by inserting a credit card and pressing a button, but it's inactive when disconnected from the network, just as players club cards and TITO are in our home slots. However, an innovative guy on the Pachitalk site created two versions of hardware that reactivate that feature for the U.S. home player. I didn't buy it but it was very cool.